The Legislature asked the Department of Licensing to create a workgroup to examine the use of disabled parking placards and special license plates for persons with disabilities, and develop a strategic plan for ending any abuse.

The workgroup is made up of representatives from DOL, Department of Health, City of Seattle, Governor’s Committee on Disability Issues and Employment, and Arc of Washington.

The workgroup has been meeting since June to research and review data to determine where potential abuse may be, develop measures to reduce fraudulent use and issuance, and suggest ways to strengthen administrative processes, while minimizing the impact to individuals who really need these privileges.

The deadline for public comments is October 15, 2013.

The workgroup will report its findings—and a strategic plan on ideas to potentially reduce abuse—to the Legislature by December 1, 2013.

The public may share ideas with the workgroup by sending an email to: DPWorkgroup@dol.wa.gov.

From time to time, representatives from major Hollywood movie studios contact the Department of Licensing to get help making feature films that have stories that take place in Washington. The production of a Twilight movie is a recent example.

These studios generally hire a “prop house” to provide all of the various items surrounding—and used by—the actors to make their movie seem realistic. If a movie takes place in Washington, they need to put Washington license plates on the vehicles to make them look authentic.

But here is the secret: these prop houses generally make their own Washington state license plates so they can control the numbers on them. To make realistic license plates, we are often asked two kinds of questions.

First, the prop houses want to know about our state’s license plate configurations, meaning the combinations of letters and numbers used on various types of vehicles. They want to make sure that each type of vehicle in the film has the right type of plate number. This seems to be particularly important to them if they are making action movies, because they want to make sure that any police or emergency vehicles used in a production have authentic-looking plate numbers.

We also get questions about what the movie folks call “clearances.” When they make their license plates, they want to make sure they aren’t using plates with numbers that are already being used on a vehicle currently registered in our state. They provide a list of plate numbers they would like to use and we let them know whether those numbers are in use.

Passenger vehicle owners in Whitman, Whatcom, Asotin, Benton, Franklin, and Kitsap Counties will be the first to receive the new seven-character passenger vehicle license plates officially announced last October. These plates are issued for use on cars and sport-utility vehicles.

The new plates will have three letters followed by four numbers (AAA1111). This new configuration will yield about 138 million possible combinations. The general appearance of these new license plates won’t change—the colors will be the same and they will still feature the standard mountain background currently in use.

The first plates manufactured, with numbers AAA0000 through AAA0599, were shipped to Whitman County and will soon be distributed to local vehicle licensing offices. These offices will begin issuing them after they run out of the current six-character license plates they have in their inventories. This process will be used in all counties.

Like Washington’s other license plates, this new series is produced by prison inmates through the Correctional Industries program at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. They are shipped directly from the production facility to counties across our state.

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